


Hold Onto That Feeling

by tielan



Series: Meet Ugly [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drunkenness, F/M, meet ugly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 12:55:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4436300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oh God, for shame, he doesn't even know her name...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold Onto That Feeling

**Author's Note:**

> Meet Ugly: “your first impression of me is ‘that guy who came up to his apartment at 2am one night drunk and naked’” AU. For great hilarity.

When Maria first realises there’s a naked guy standing outside her apartment block, banging on the door, she’s tempted to go in through underground parking instead of risking a confrontation.

He’s too drunk to notice her straight off, though, so she hesitates, and in that moment, recognises him. Okay, so she’s a little distracted on account of him being built and, you know, _naked_. All that lean limb and well-defined muscle is usually covered over with loose clothing, and someone gave him a haircut so he no longer looks like an escapee from the forties, but she’s seen him around.

‘Steve’ his dark-haired friend had called him as they’d exited out the door and the elevator doors slowly closed to take Maria up to her apartment. As in, _Shit, Steve, you never said there were babes living in your apartment block!_

‘Steve’ pounds a fist against the solid wood of the door – he’d have slashed his wrists by now if it had been glass. “Sam? Hey, Sam, let me in. Sam? Come on, buddy, it’s cold out here!”

Maria pauses at the bottom of the stairs for a moment – and, incidentally, takes a moment to appreciate the sculpted buttocks before her. She doesn’t know what he does for a living, but if she had to nominate him for anything, ‘male stripper’ would be at the top of her list.

But that’s neither here nor there. She coughs, politely.

He turns around, startled, and stares at her as though trying to think of who she is. Then, after a moment, he smiles, a little hesitantly. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Maria notes he hasn’t covered his groin, but doesn’t look. “Forgot your keys?”

“Yeah. Kind of. I think Fandral took them, along with my—Oh, crap.” _Now_ his hands move to cover himself, and a scarlet flush tinges his chest and shoulders along with his cheeks. At least, Maria presumes it’s scarlet – there’s a darker wash of colour rising across his fair skin. “Um.”

“Guess Fandral took your clothes, too,” Maria says as she climbs the stairs and puts her key in the lock. “Big night out?”

“Sort of. My friend got engaged and we went out to celebrate.”

Maria blinks, a little surprised. “Celebrate?”

“Well, yes. Engagement?”

“Guys don’t usually _celebrate._ ”

“Then you don’t know the right kind of guys.”

“Clearly.” Maria starts to push the door open, then pauses as he holds it open for her. With the hand he was using to cover himself. She _doesn’t_ look down. Instead, she walks past, as though she has doors held open for her by naked men all the time.

He stumbles in behind her, not exactly steady on his feet since he pretty much takes a header into the wall. Maria loops an arm around him as he starts to slide down, and wonders if she’s been conned when his arm comes firmly over her shoulder. But he doesn’t grab for her breast with his left hand, he reaches for the wall and there’s a precarious second when it looks uncertain that it’ll actually hold him up.

Then, “Note to self,” he says after a few seconds, “never go drinking with Thor and his buddies unless Bucky or Sam come with to drag me home.”

“Sounds like a resolution,” Maria agrees. “Think you can make the elevator?”

“What happens if I say no?”

“Well,” she says, pretending to think, “I could try picking you up in a fireman’s carry, but I don’t like your chances, so you’d probably just end up sleeping on the floor in the lobby.”

“Guess I better make it to the elevator, then,” he says cheerfully, and with some careful navigation, they make it to the elevator lobby – where ‘careful navigation’ involves him singing a song about ‘one foot in front of the other’ in a slightly hoarse voice that has Maria biting her lip as she presses the elevator button.

By the time they angle themselves into the elevator car, he’s switched to ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ in a warbling falsetto that doesn’t quite hide the fact that – for a drunk guy – he’s holding the tune pretty well.

“ _A singer in a smokey room… A smell of wine and cheap perfume…_ Come on, you know this song, right? _For a smile they can share the night, it goes on and on and on and on…_ ”

Maria knows the song. But she doesn’t sing. And no power in the ‘verse is going to persuade her to sing this – especially not with her good looking neighbour who is stark naked and completely shitfaced.

“ _Strangers waiting up and down the boulevarde..._ ”

The elevator announces their arrival at his floor.

As they head down the corridor in what she presumes is the direction of his apartment, Maria realises that if he doesn’t have keys for the apartment block, he doesn’t have keys for his apartment either.

No. No, she is absolutely _not_ going to let him sleep on her couch—

Then her companion lifts his singing game, and one of the apartment doors down the corridor opens a crack and a dark eye peers out. “Rogers? What the—Hill?”

“Mr. Fury,” she says, a little startled to find her former employer here. “Hi.”

“Hey, Nick!” He doesn’t quite manage to plant his feet and stay upright, and inadvertantly wedging Maria up against the wall. She shuffles him around so she and the wall are holding him up between them, instead of him pushing up against her and the wall.

“You know Rogers?”

“Not really,” she admits. “Picked him up outside the building trying to get in.”

“Uhuh. He like that when you got him?”

“As the day he was born.”

“Right. And seeing as he has no clothes, I’m guessing he has no keys, either?”

“Something I just realised.”

Fury reaches behind his front door. There’s a clink of metal against wood. “As it so happens...”

Maria can’t quite reach the key as it’s tossed. Rogers can – and does with surprising accuracy for a drunk man. “Knew it would come in handy.”

“You’re just lucky I’m grumpy and old and I don’t sleep much,” says Fury conversationally as he closes the door. “Have fun, Hill.”

Maria was about to ask for help. Rogers’ hand-eye co-ordination and his singing pitch may be really good, but both his ability to walk in a straight line and his fine motor skills are definitely shot.

In the end, she takes the key from his hand, shoves it in the lock and they shoulder the door open.

It’s a pretty nice apartment for a guy. Not that Maria gets to study the décor; once inside, they stagger over to the couch, where he pretty much collapses with a groan.

“I am never going out with those guys again unless Bucky or Sam are there to drag me home. Never.”

“I think you already mentioned that,” Maria says, having no idea who either Bucky or Sam are, but taking a moment to catch her breath. He’s not a lightly made guy - six feet of muscle without an ounce of fat so far as Maria can tell. Yes, she’s looked. And, with that in mind, it’s a bad idea to remain sitting with a drunk and naked man on his couch in his apartment.

Especially when he looks as good as Rogers.

Beside her, he suddenly shifts and his knees suddenly angle in together. “Um. I just realised I don’t have any clothes on.”

“Yes, that is a feature,” Maria says, looking across at him, careful to keep her eyes above his neck. Yes, she checked him out while helping him down the hallway; no, she doesn’t see why she should be obvious in her ogling.

“Right. Well, this is really awkward.”

She laughs as she gets to her feet. “Yes. Yes, it is. Which is why I’m not helping you to bed.”

“I…uh…” He shuts his mouth. Opens it again. Shuts it. And opens it to say, “Thank you. For getting me up here. You didn’t have to and...I don’t even know your name.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Just not welcome enough to get your name?”

“No.”

After a moment he sighs. “You know when I imagined us having a conversation, I was usually clothed.”

“Usually?”

Rogers winces. “I’ve already mentioned awkward, haven’t I?”

“Yes.” Maria smiles to herself as she heads for the door. “You have. Good night, Rogers.”

The smile sticks around in the elevator where Maria finds herself humming, _Don’t Stop Believing_ all the way up to her apartment.

**Author's Note:**

> TBH, this iteration of Steve owes rather more to Jensen from The Losers - a character who is, apparently, the most like Chris Evans according to The Word Of Mom - than to Steve Rogers, little guy from Brooklyn. Although they're both pretty awkward with women.


End file.
